Owner of Billie’s Pastries remembered for her impact in East St. Louis and beyond

Billie Jean Miller touched many lives.

Friends and family tell stories of her passion for helping others, her political savvy and strength of character, her role as family matriarch and the community impact of Billie’s Pastries, her East St. Louis business that’s a gathering place for many in the metro-east.

Miller passed away Feb. 25 after battling breast cancer. She would have been 88 years old later this year. Her funeral is noon Saturday at Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church in East St. Louis, preceded by visitation from 10 a.m.to noon. Pastor Darius Miller will eulogize his grandmother at the service.

“She leaves a legacy and lasting mark on the region,” Pastor Miller told the BND. “Billie was known to be a person of faith and tough in business and politics, but fair and kind as well. She also courageously believed in people and the potential for each person to rise above their given life station.”

She was the owner and proprietor of the business that bears her name at 7301 State St. Billie’s Pastries is known as ``The Doughnut Shop” to the many regulars who have visited the place since it opened about 44 years ago.

Pastor Miller said his grandmother made the shop a landmark for regulars, aspiring politicians, public officials and the broader St. Clair County community.

“Under her committed hand, The Doughnut Shop became a place where all were welcome to exchange ideas, debate current events and share life experiences,” he said.

Local civic leaders and politicians can attest to the importance of Billie’s shop as a gathering place.

The place is always filled with chatter, and Billie Jean Miller was often right in the thick of it.

“Politicians and citizens went there to eat some good pastries and to share gossip. It was a place that a lot of politicians frequented,” said Frank Smith, a former East St. Louis Democratic chairman. “That coffee shop on 73rd and State Street was our information booth. You could go there and you would get information about everything in town. And, she was aware of everything in town.”

A life that began in Brooklyn, Illinois

Billie’s Pastries is just part of Billie Jean Miller’s story, which began on June 23, 1936, in Brooklyn, Illinois, where Miller was born. She was the youngest of 13 children. Her parents, Annie Mae and Nathaniel O’Bannon Sr., raised her in the small town.

Billie, as she was affectionately called by most people, graduated from Lincoln Senior High School in East St. Louis.

She married the late Henry Miller Sr., and the couple had nine children and at least 80 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

One of her children is Gina Miller-Jackson, who takes joy in talking about the important role her mother played in raising a family.

“Growing up, my mom was the PTA president, all while I was in grade school,” she said. “ I saw a mother that was a volunteer, and a very active parent for all of her children.”

Whatever event the children were involved in, Miller-Jackson said her mother was there supporting and encouraging them.

“She was an active parent. She had five girls. She got us into Girl Scouts and all kinds of other activities, and she was there with us,” Miller-Jackson said.

Miller-Jackson said Billie took the same approach with her sons. Henry Miller Jr., the eldest son now deceased, was responsible for making sure “everyone stayed in line when mom had to be away for a bit.”

Marlon Miller was “the baby of the bunch who is still spoiled by the family,” Miller-Jackson said, laughing.

“That was her baby,” Miller-Jackson said. As Billie’s cancer progressed, “she reminded us to take care of Marlon,” Miller-Jackson said, chuckling and sharing that Marlon is now 60. But, yes she and others in the family plan to do just as she requested them to do.

Miller-Jackson said family was always first with her mother.

“All of us still get along,” Miller-Jackson said. “ For it to be nine of us, that’s unusual. We might fuss, but by the end of the day we are back together.”

Billie Jean Miller was a member of the Church of the Living God in Fairview Heights. She joined after she saw how it helped one of her sons.

Asked whether her mom cooked for the family, Miller-Jackson said, in a questioning voice, “Did you really ask me that?”

“Of course my mom cooked! She had nine children. We couldn’t afford anything else,” Miller-Jackson said.

She made especially good spaghetti and pound cake. “ No one could make spaghetti like my mom,” she said.

Billie heads to work outside of the home

When Miller-Jackson was a teenager, her mother went to work at what was known as the General Assistance office in old Centreville, now a part of Cahokia Heights.

“ I saw her network and really work to inspire, uplift and motivate people who were on General Assistance,” she said. “She had a caseload ...It was amazing what she would do.”

She also worked as a teacher’s assistant in East St. Louis School District 189 for nearly 20 years. She was active in the lives of children, who never forgot how she supported and assisted them, Miller-Jackson said.

She opened Billie’s Pastries in late 1979 or early 1980, with husband Henry Miller Sr.’s help.

“From there, the fire ignited. She was just a community person,” Miller-Jackson said. “Whatever the situation was, my mom was going to find out what she could do. If she couldn’t do it, she was going to find out who could do it.”

Billie Jean Miller was a Republican, serving more than 35 years as a precinct committeewoman. “Because this is a majority Democrat area, she walked and worked both aisles,” Miller-Jackson said.

She became clerk and city treasurer of Centreville, and served on several boards.

“My mom was about helping people,” Miller-Jackson said. “She did this all of her life. She saw a lot of fights. If it was a good fight, she was going to get in it.”

The late Congressman John Lewis presented an award from the NAACP to Billie. “That was just phenomenal.She loved to echo those words he often said ‘If you see a good fight, get in it,’” Miller-Jackson said.

Billie’s impact on the community

Smith, the former Democratic committee chairman, and Frankie Seaberry, the former mayor of Centreville, both described Billie Jean Miller as having a ``beautiful personality.”

“I have known her as a politician and a regular citizen,” Smith said.” She was a great person. She is going to be missed.”

Seaberry and Miller were lifelong friends.

“ I love the way she reared her sons and daughters. The boys never got in trouble. I like her daughters and grandchildren’s personas,” she said. “ All of her children are very mannerable. She was a big talker. She is going to really be missed.”

Former Brooklyn Mayor Nathaniel O’Bannon III said he will miss his Aunt Billie. He said she was highly respected and gave him advice during his tenure as mayor.

“ She used her gifts from East St. Louis, to Centreville, to Brooklyn.” he said. “She spread her intellect around. She was bad, fierce and a very strong black woman.”

And her business, Billie’s Pastries, was a focal point where people gathered to share their thoughts and dreams about politics.“ The talk was about moving their communities forward and what could be done to help one another and how we could grow our communities to a new horizon. They shared all of that with each other,” he said.

Miller-Jackson has been amazed by the outpouring from people who have stopped by Billie’s Pastries “to tell me how my mom helped them to get a job, or tell me she called to help them get housing or did this and that for them to help them have a better quality of life. It was just my mother… whatever she could do. I didn’t even know how much my mom had done,” Miller -Jackson said.

She said the family will keep Billie’s legacy alive by keeping the business open and continuing to serve the community the way Billie did.

“I want to ask the community to continue to support us so we can keep our mother’s legacy alive,” she said. “ I also want to ask those who she helped to pay it forward by sharing what she did for them with someone else who needs help”.

(The family asks that any correspondence or condolences be sent to Teat Chapel Funeral Home and Cremation Service, 10419 Lincoln Trail, Fairview Heights. Other expressions of sympathy can be sent to Billie’s Pastries at 7301 State St., East St. Louis.)